Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Colin McEnroe’s Dreams

“But it's intriguing to dream of a Lieberman reconciliation. [Difficult as it is to believe from what follows, Mr. McEnroe is envisioning reconciliation between Mr. Lieberman and himself] Even though I have known him longer and better than most of you and had uneasily noticed — before most people did — the slow, Gollum-like warping of his politics and his personality, I miss the Joe Lieberman you could talk to without feeling the need to be accompanied by an exorcist.

“It would a wonderful thing if he returned to Connecticut and announced he will not seek re-election in 2012. We would probably need that in writing. Notarized. Then he could give a series of interviews in which he discussed, thoughtfully and in a healing manner, the fascinating choices that led to his recent 25 and 30 percent approval ratings. The 2011 Joe Lieberman "Hug It Out Tour." You know you want it.

“That is probably not going to happen because locating the unassuming, reflective person living under all those layers of Lieberman vanity and ambition is an extraction process that makes the Chilean miners rescue look like a single afternoon of leaf-raking.

“Instead, I believe that Lieberman will circle Connecticut's political landscape like a wolf waiting for a campfire to die down. The Democrats will not nominate him. "Connecticut for Lieberman," the party he founded but neglected to join, was boarded by pirates who sailed it around and crashed it into the rocks last Election Day, when it failed to get 1 percent of the vote and thus lost its ballot position.”

Other boiling cauldrons of satire, not all of them Courant commentators, surely will erupt as Lieberman contemplates his future in Connecticut politics. Mr. Lieberman has become the Sarah Palin of Democratic progressives in the state and was, at one point in his career, unfortunate enough to endorse as president Mrs. Palin’s running mate, Republican Sen. John McCain,

For the most part, Mr. Lieberman always has and still does vote with the now dwindling Democratic majority.

Since Mr. Lieberman has gone to some trouble to advertise himself as an Independent, he likely will run as an Independent. And if he does not run, progressive Democrats and others will hop on Rep. Chris Murphy’s bandwagon. Mr. McEnroe will be among others leading the parade unless like Hamlet, thinking himself bounded in a walnut shell, he has bad dreams.